First Time 'Round
by Rapunzel24
Summary: Being a woman is hard enough. Being an immortal time-traveling alien woman with no experience of ever being a member of the female gender? A little bit harder. After a lonely (and life-changing) regeneration, the 13th Doctor sets out to find herself a companion and figure out a new body with a new gender.
1. Clothes

The first things she felt were the sudden changes in her anatomy, even without opening her eyes or moving a muscle.

Regeneration had always been like this, agonizing and oddly itchy as her body twisted itself into a new form. But back then she had always been a _he_ \- always a man's body, no matter how unique the appearance. This was different, though, because now the biggest change of physique wasn't anything as simple as height or size or hair color.

 _She was a girl!_

It came at once: a sudden weight on her chest; the curving of her form, hips widening; she shot down, shorter than she had ever been before (it was ridiculous, she was barely taller than a few of her previous companions); hair growing longer until it stopped right below her chin. Her eyes widened as the pain and blinding light finally ebbed. Shaking back too-long black sleeves that had fit her previous form but certainly not this new one, she lifted her hands in front of her face. They were smaller, the fingers narrower and the palms daintier. All callouses and scratches and scars from old Eyebrows's time were gone, replaced by the usual fresh skin of regeneration. Some good twiddling with the screwdriver and an attempt or two at fixing the Tardis would probably fix the skin's feeling of newness, but for her the sight was enough to confirm her thoughts.

"I'm a _girl_!" the Doctor cried, for the very first time in her entire life.

The first order of business was to find some new clothes. The Doctor's previous regeneration had been much taller and differently built, and she looked absolutely ridiculous in his long coat and trousers. Besides, it seemed that trouble always roused after she regenerated. It simply wouldn't do if she had to flee Daleks or any other enemy and ended up tripping on her face.

Leaning against the Tardis console, the Doctor gave herself a moment to breathe. Pre-regeneration was always a bit tipsy. Better not to go through it alone. Last time, she remembered, she'd had Clara with her. But what had Clara said? What had she looked like? Had she been washed with tears as the Doctor glowed with energy, or had she smiled softly and hugged the new, greyer form as he emerged from the light? The Doctor couldn't remember what Clara had been like, or how she talked and reacted to the crazy things that had been thrown in her way. It was a pity. Perhaps Clara had been important to the Doctor, once.

The last time the Doctor had gone through regeneration alone had been quite a while back. She could remember that, too; the lump of emotions in her throat as she'd come to the realization- she didn't want to go. Rose had been there as well, right before it had happened. The Doctor still remembered her, of course she did. She remembered them all. Rose, with her blue eyes. Martha, with her white doctor's coat. Donna, with her loud attitude. Amy, with her ginger locks. Clara- she was just a sense of _being_ , someone who had existed once. And there was Bill, with her colorful clothes and wide smile. The Doctor wondered if she would ever see any of them again, and how each would react to her brand new form. It was an amusing thought, particularly when she remembered her wife, River Song. River would be fascinated by this new body. The Doctor hoped she might somehow meet River soon enough- she missed her quite a bit.

The Tardis hummed loudly, jolting the Doctor from her thoughts. She grinned at the console, patting it fondly. "Hey, sister. Guess who's a girl now?"

A few buzzes and a beep.

"Nah, I can keep calling you sexy if you want."

Loud grinding and then silence.

"Great. I'm going to try and find some new clothes."

There was a dressing room a few corridors down, packed ceiling to floor with closets and wardrobes and drawers and a few shiny mirrors. It was something of a tradition for each new regeneration to pick out an outfit from the Tardis's large stock of clothes, and the time had come again.

"Whoa." The Doctor stopped short right as she entered the room, staring across it at a mirror parallel to the door. "Is that supposed to be _me_?!"

The figure in the mirror was shorter than she was used to, with a roundish head and soft-looking facial features. Her nose was easily smaller than the previous one, and above it two warm brown eyes topped by thin eyebrows. The face stared back at the Doctor from the mirror, reflecting her shock and amazement.

"Look at that!" she kept talking aloud to herself. "I really look like a girl- _wow_ , this is insane!"

The Doctor's hand flew to her hair and her eyes widened again. "My hair! It's longer! And it's blonde-" a sigh, "-if only it were ginger, but I'll cope. I'm _finally_ a girl!"

Then her eyes traveled down the mirror, noticing the black coat that gave off an air that it was drowning her inside it. This wouldn't do at all.

Tearing her eyes away from the sight in the mirror, the Doctor shrugged off her long coat and dropped it on the floor, kicking the too-big shoes off as well and padding across the room in her socks. There were certainly some women's clothes here somewhere; Rose and Martha and Donna and Amy and Bill had all dressed for the past in outfits from this room. She pulled open a closet, pushed aside a rack of bow ties (honestly, what had she been thinking back when she was a man?) and revealed a bounty of tightly-crammed clothes dangling from hangars.

This discovery was followed by a few minutes of measurements and sighing, until finally the Doctor found something suitable and got dressed. The previous form's clothes were tossed carelessly into a nearby set of drawers; there was no use for them now that the Doctor was a woman. All she needed at the moment was a pair of shoes and she was good to go- go where, she didn't know yet, but she needed to move.

Then a spurt of hot pain and the Doctor yelped, toppling against a nearby wardrobe. How had the chin regeneration put it…she was still cooking, wasn't she? It was going to hurt quite a bit every once in a while, maybe she should stay put-

The Doctor shook away those thoughts and grabbed the nearest footwear she saw, cramming her feet into the shoes and yanking herself to a standing position. It was time to take on the day and hopefully find somebody friendly, so she could ask what year it was and what would be the chances of immediate alien invasion.

She blew a kiss to the console, one hand on the door handle. "See you later! And don't go running off!"

The Tardis hummed in reply, and the Doctor threw open the door and stepped out into the sunlight.


	2. Chapter 2

Hey guys!

I'm so sorry about my inactivity recently. I've been struggling with MOUNTAINS of Writer's Block and a lot of insecurity about my writing, and I seriously considered giving up fanfiction because I feel what I write is very poor quality. But I'm gonna keep dragging on! So this fanfic is going to be in a little hiatus, so give myself some time to try new ideas and work on new chapters. I've been reading some of my old writing here and I really have improved (and by improved I mean that once I was utterly horrible at fanfiction), so I hope that I still get better as I go along.

Thank you so much for your support, and hopefully I'll be updating very soon!


	3. Goodbye

Hey, guys.

I'm writing this to let you know I will not be updating or adding to this story again. Not now, not ever.

Writing and publishing my fanfiction on this site was a meaningful part of my life, but it provided a lot of stress and I have decided to stop doing so. I probably will not be writing any fanfic at all any more, apart from specific fandoms and ideas that don't make me uncomfortable.

A lot of my fanfics are very hard for me to reread, but I will leave them up in case anybody might ever still want to read them.

Thank you all so much for being part of my growing experience as a writer. If you would be interested in my original, non-fanfiction writing, my Wattpad is teacalligraphy- you may recognize some fanfics I posted there a while back and left up for the same reason as I left them up here.

Yours Truly,

Kiwi (Anna)


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